


i love the ground whereon she stands

by drfitzmonster



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, Diary/Journal, F/F, First Kiss, Fix It, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Love Confessions, i tried to make it as heavy on the comfort as possible
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-26 19:48:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18723772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drfitzmonster/pseuds/drfitzmonster
Summary: Lena is devastated by the contents of Lex's journal so Kara comforts her by reading some of her own writing.





	i love the ground whereon she stands

**Author's Note:**

> That journal was really upsetting. Hopefully this makes it a little better.

Kara found Lena in her office. It was past 2am and she was sitting on her couch, staring into mid distance, a tumbler of scotch in her hand. Lex’s journal was open on the coffee table in front of her. She didn’t turn when Kara landed on the balcony, or when she slipped inside, or even when she softly called her name. She just stared, but Kara could see the muscles in her jaw and neck tighten.

Lena was trying not to cry. She was holding everything in like she always did, trying to be stoic, trying not to be affected. This was not Kara’s first late-night visit to Lena’s office to coax her into talking, into allowing herself to feel things instead of shoving them into boxes and burying them as deep as they would go.

Kara approached cautiously, still calling Lena’s name. It didn’t usually take this long to get her attention. Kara sat down next to her and placed a hand on her arm. “Lena, can you look at me?”

She didn’t respond, but a tear fell from her eye and slid down her cheek.

“Please?”

There was a long moment of silence, and then Lena finally looked over at Kara. “All I ever wanted was for him to love me,” Lena said, her voice strained and cracking. “I tried so hard to be someone he could love. Someone anyone could love.” She hid her face in her hands.

Kara pulled Lena into her arms and held her tightly.

“Am I really that terrible?”

“No, baby, you’re not terrible,” Kara said, one hand moving to the space between Lena’s shoulder blades, the other to the small of her back. “You are a brilliant, kind-hearted, beautiful soul, and you are so, so very lovable. There is absolutely nothing wrong with you.”

“But there is, Kara! Lex kept a record of all of it. He said I was pathetic. He called me a puppet.”

“You are _not_ pathetic. Your brother is the pathetic one.”

Kara looked down at the journal and began to read. What she saw before she got so angry she had to slam the cover shut was more than enough to convince her of what she needed to do next. “This,” she said, stabbing her finger at the cover, “is garbage. Nothing in here is about you. It’s all about his ego, his need to manipulate and control. He isn’t the master of anything, and I’m not going to let his lies exist in this world for one more second.”

She picked up the journal and held it away from her body, away from Lena. And then she burned it. She hit it with her heat vision until it crumbled to ashes, until there was nothing left.

Good riddance.

“He doesn’t matter.” Kara pressed her forehead to Lena’s, framing her face with both hands. “It’s just you and me right now, ok?”

“Ok.”

“Do you want to come back to my apartment with me?”

“Please,” Lena said, voice sounding very small.

“Of course. Why don’t you get your coat and purse and we’ll get out of here?”

When Kara lifted Lena into a briday carry she curled herself into Kara’s body, hiding her face against Kara’s chest. She cried all the way to Kara’s apartment, cried while changing into a pair of Kara’s pajamas, cried when they got in bed and Kara spooned her, wrapping her arms around Lena’s waist and placing a single kiss on her bare shoulder. She just cried.

It hurt Kara’s heart to see Lena in such pain, but Kara didn’t say anything. What could she say? What could she possibly say to make things any better? So many words sat like stones in her mouth and she swallowed them all, bit her tongue to keep herself from saying _I’m so sorry_ and _I wish I could take away the pain_ and _I just want to protect you_ and _you are the most amazing person I’ve ever met and I am so very in love with you_.

There was just so much she wanted to say.

At least she was with Lena, holding her. Kara could ignore the dread and sorrow and even the truths burning in the pit of her stomach if she could just stay this close.

When Lena finally stopped crying she got up and shut herself in the bathroom, emerging right about the time Kara started to wonder if she was ok in there. Lena sat at the foot of the bed, facing away from her, shoulders slumped. She was trembling.

“Lena?” Kara called softly. “Is it ok if I come closer?”

Lena nodded, and Kara came and sat next to her, taking her hand and intertwining their fingers.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Lena sniffled and wiped the tears from her face. “I hate how easily he gets to me. All he has to do is say one little demeaning thing and it’s like I’m eight years old again, trying to win his approval. Was it so wrong for me to want that?”

“Of course it’s not wrong for you to want your family to love and accept you.”

“I let him manipulate me for so long. How could I have been so stupid?”

“Come on.” Kara shifted toward Lena, holding her arms open, and Lena only hesitated for a moment before falling into her embrace.

“You’re not stupid, Lena. You were a child. You didn’t ‘let him’ do anything. He abused you. He betrayed your trust.” She stroked Lena’s hair gently, hoping it would calm her even just a little.

“I should have known. I should have recognized it sooner.”

“How could you have known? Would you say that to me, if I’d been through the same thing you have, that I should have known?”

Lena pulled back, hands moving to the crooks of Kara’s elbows. “No, of course not. I would never say something that cruel to you.”

“Then why are you saying it to yourself? It doesn’t matter how long it took you, the point is that you figured it out. You got away. Lex has no power over you. He can’t control you anymore. You’re free of him.”

“I’m not, Kara. I’m not. I can still hear his voice in my head telling me I’m weak and naive and pathetic. God—” she gritted her teeth and let out an anguished cry, pressing the heels of her palms against her eyes. “I don’t even know what’s me and what’s him anymore.”

Kara gently pulled Lena’s hands away from her face. “I know what’s you,” she said, wiping the tears from Lena’s cheeks with her thumbs. “I know you.”

“I just... I feel like there’s poison inside me, like he infected me.”

“You’re not infected. He tried to change you, to control you, to mold you in his own image, but he _failed_. You’re stronger than he is. You always have been.”

“But what if I am infected? What if deep down, I’m exactly like him?”

“You’re not. You’re nothing like him.” Kara sighed. This was not how she’d planned to confess her true feelings for Lena. Loving her as a friend was one thing, but being _in love_ with her? That was very, very different.

Kara didn’t know what else to do. She had to make Lena understand. “Can I show you something?”

“Ok.”

Kara got up and retrieved her journal from her nightstand. Since the day she bought it she’d been filling it with some of the most embarrassing thoughts she’d ever had about another person. She was mortified at the thought of Lena seeing even half the things Kara had written about her, but it didn’t matter. She would do anything if it would help Lena see.

She sat down on the bed next to Lena, letting out one more heavy sigh. It was now or never. “This is _my_ journal. I started it the first day I met you.”

Lena’s face fell. “You’ve been keeping a journal about me?” She started to move away from Kara.

“No, Lena, wait. It’s not like that,” Kara said, reaching out for her. “Can I just read something to you? Please?”

Lena stopped, still frowning. “Ok...”

Kara opened her journal to the first entry and began to read. “Today I met Lena Luthor! Kal told me I shouldn’t trust her but I think he’s wrong. I can tell she’s not like her brother at all. She just wants to help people. I hope I get to see her again soon.” She looked up at Lena. “Do you want me to keep going?”

Lena just nodded.

Kara flipped a couple of pages and found another relevant entry. “I had lunch with Lena today. She was wearing this beautiful blue dress and she looked so pretty. It really made the blue in her eyes stand out. They’re pale green, mostly, but she has just a tiny bit of blue right around the edge. It’s more of a blue-grey usually, but today it looked so blue, like the ocean.”

After that, Kara didn’t stop, she just kept reading. There was so much that Lena needed to hear.

“I told Lena my Super secret today. J’onn and Alex said I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t keep lying to Lena like that. It was killing me. So many people have betrayed her in her life. I didn’t want to be just another person on that list. So I told her, and I thought it was going to be a big deal, but it wasn’t at all. She said she already knew! She’s known since the first day we met. She was just waiting for me to be comfortable enough to tell her. I’m so very glad I did.”

“My article about Lena was finally published! I was so nervous about what she would think. I don’t know why. She loved it!! She loved it so much she filled my entire office with flowers!!!! I couldn’t even get to my desk. AND. Even better than that. She said I’m her hero— and she didn’t mean Supergirl me, she meant Kara Danvers me. Can you believe that?”

“I could listen to Lena talk for hours. She’s so passionate and brilliant and when she gets really excited she forgets herself just a little. She lets her guard down, she opens herself up, and I can see her, the real Lena. She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I wish Lena could see her too.”

“Lena pretends she’s cold and calculating, all sharp edges and strategizing, but she’s not. She’s one of the softest, kindest people I’ve ever met. She’s sensitive. She tries to hide it, but I see how affected she is by the things people say about her, all those terrible tabloid headlines. She wants so badly to turn L-Corp around. She wants to make it a force for good. If anyone can do it, it’s Lena.”  

“Someone tried to assassinate Lena again. I’m terrified that something is going to happen to her. I just want to protect her from everything but I know I can’t. I’ve started listening for her heartbeat, just so I know she’s ok. It’s the only way I can sleep anymore. Sometimes even that’s not enough, and I’ll fly by her penthouse just to make sure she’s there, still alive and breathing. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost her.”

“Lena caught me staring at her hands today. I tried to play it off like I was just zoning out, but I don’t know if she believed me. It was so embarrassing, but I couldn’t help it. I can’t stop thinking about her hands. I have dreams about them, all the things they can do, all the people they’ve helped, all the lives they’ve touched. I wish she would touch me.”

“I just want her to know me. I want to tell her everything about me. Every embarrassment, every failure, each and every secret. I want to tell her all of them, every single one, until she can see every last bit of me. Until she can see all the things I’ve been afraid to show anyone else, all the things I’ve been afraid to show _her_.”

“I don’t know what to do with all these feelings. I’ve tried to ignore them, but they won’t leave me alone.  I’ve tried to convince myself that they’re not real, or not important, or that I just really, really like her as a friend. But I know none of that is true. I love Lena Luthor. I am in love with her. Hopelessly, hopelessly, head over heels in love with her. What the heck am I supposed to do now?”

Kara shut the journal, running her fingers over the cover. She was afraid to look up, afraid to see Lena’s face now that she finally knew the truth. Kara just wanted Lena to understand how wonderful she really was. It didn’t matter if Kara’s feelings were unrequited as long as she could make Lena understand.

Kara placed the journal in Lena’s hands. “ _This_ is you, Lena, not all those hateful things Lex wrote.”

Lena caught Kara’s gaze. “Do you really mean all of this?”

“Yes, I mean every word.” If Lena only knew all the things Kara felt that she’d been too afraid to write down.

“You love me?”

“How could I not? You are the most amazing woman I’ve ever met. I never stood a chance.” Kara looked down at her hands. “I’m sorry. This is not the way I wanted to tell you.”

“How did you want to tell me?”

“I wanted to take you outside the city one night, to the hills. There’s a place I like to go that’s so peaceful and you can see the stars so brightly. It’s my favorite place to be, besides with you. I wanted to share that with you. I wanted to hold your hand and tell you how much you mean to me.”

“You still can.”

“What?”

“You can still take me there. And you can tell me exactly how you wanted to, except for one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“You’ll know already that I love you too.”

“You do?”

“I never stood a chance,” Lena said, wiping the tears from under her eyes.

Kara pulled Lena into her arms and hugged her, embracing her as tightly as she could without hurting her. She never wanted to let go, and it seemed like Lena didn’t either. She was clinging to Kara just as desperately as Kara was holding on to her.

They finally broke apart, and Kara slid one hand down to Lena’s waist, the other moving to the side of Lena’s face. For one quiet moment Kara just looked into Lena’s eyes. The green was darker and the blue brighter than she’d ever seen before.

“Can I...” Lena moved in closer. “Can I kiss you?”

“Wait.” Kara wanted to do this right. Lena deserved that, and so much more. “Can I take you to my favorite place first? When we get there I promise we can kiss as much as you want.”

Lena bit her lip. “Ok.”

Kara flew them to her favorite place: a small clearing on a hill overlooking National City. They were almost completely encircled by a copse of trees, save for a small gap that gave them a perfect view of the city skyline illuminated against a night sky peppered with stars.

Kara wrapped her cape around the both of them.

“Beautiful view,” Lena said, her gaze squarely centered on Kara’s face.

“Yeah, it sure is,” Kara replied, unable to look away from her. She took Lena’s hands. “I’ve imagined this moment so many times. I’ve had dreams about it. I’ve planned out everything I wanted to say and then scrapped it and started over more times than I can count, but now that we’re here all I can think about is how much I want to kiss you.”

“Then kiss me.”

And so Kara did. She pulled Lena closer and when their lips met it was the softest, sweetest thing Kara had ever experienced. Her hands moved to Lena’s face of their own accord, and she let herself get carried away in the feeling of Lena’s mouth on her own. Lena tasted like scotch and tears and everything they’d been holding back from each other for so long.

The promise of their love was blooming in Kara’s chest, as real and alive as Lena in her arms, pressing her tongue into Kara’s mouth, sucking on her bottom lip, clutching at the sleeves of her suit. It was all real. Kara had sheltered the seed in her heart where it sprouted and vined and the longer they held onto each other the more it grew between them.

They were linked now, entangled inextricably, the state of one’s existence wholly dependent upon the other. It felt right, and true, like she’d been waiting all her life for Lena to find her, like the two of them together were more than either one of them alone. And what they were together was home.

Kissing Lena was like coming home. Kara never wanted to stop.

Kara did eventually break away from Lena, despite being far from sated, after long moments of exploration that seemed at once to Kara too much and not enough. “Was that ok?” she asked, feeling a sudden twinge of anxiety.

“It was perfect.” Lena smiled, she actually smiled, for the first time that evening, and all the tension that had been coiled so tightly in Kara’s chest finally released.

She picked up Lena’s hand and kissed her fingertips. “Would you like to watch the sunrise with me?”

“Yes. I would very much.”

Kara sat beneath a sycamore tree, her cape spread out on the ground beneath her. Lena sat between her legs, leaning back against her chest so Kara could tuck her chin over her shoulder. Together they watched as dawn broke, casting the sky in fiery pinks and oranges, rousing the city from its sleep to start a day that felt fresh and glorious and new.

“Everyone always says the sunrise over National City is breathtaking,” Kara said softly, kissing the shell of Lena’s ear, “but I never really believed it until right now.”  

Lena hummed contentedly and leaned her head against Kara’s. “Me either.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on tumblr for fic progress updates, headcanons, prompt fills, and other fun stuff: [@drfitzmonster](http://drfitzmonster.tumblr.com)


End file.
